How to Find the Best Divorce Lawyer in Santa Clarita California?  - Divorce & Family Law in Santa Clarita

It’s a trick question. You don’t need to identify the absolute best divorce lawyer or attorney in Santa Clarita, California There are several divorce lawyers in Santa Clarita that would certainly do an every bit as fine job for you. It would be inconceivable to identify which one is the “best.”

The actual question for you, the Santa Clarita divorce consumer, is just how to choose just one of those Santa Clarita top divorce lawyers at the ideal levels of representation as well as expense for the facts of your unique case – while avoiding every one of the usual, as well as sometimes unsafe, mistakes of the Santa Clarita divorce lawyer selection choice.

If you understand what those mistakes are (I will certainly advise you in this blog post) as well as if you have the proper mindset, particularly that you wish to make your Santa Clarita divorce lawyer fit your case as well as not permit the lawyer to force your case to fit his/her stiff practice profile, then you boost considerably your possibilities of nailing the Santa Clarita divorce lawyer hiring choice. Getting you through that decision successfully is the purpose of this blog post.

Initially, let’s list the 4 aspects to steer clear of:

1. Avoid Do-It-Yourself Divorce:

It is possible, repeat POSSIBLE, to download totally free family law forms from California’s judicial council or family court internet sites. Those totally free divorce forms are going to be blank, of course. You can then try to complete as well as record the forms at your regional Los Angeles County divorce court on your own without specialist help. This is possible – but highly unlikely, really difficult, complex, discouraging as well as exceptionally lengthy.

Do it yourself divorce would be practically unachievable, as well as not wise even to try, in any type of  elaborate or contended family law action. It would be highly unlikely to be a success if you have minor children of the marriage or have any type of assets or financial obligations to be itemized in the event or have custody, visitation or assistance agreements in your matter. It would certainly be foolish in a matter entailing domestic violence. Do it yourself would likewise be difficult if you work or if you position any type of worth on your own time. Family law documents as well as procedures are developed by lawyers to confuse you so that you hire – an attorney.

Please excuse me if I don’t spend way too much time on the do it yourself threat. My experience on the cutting edge of California divorce for the past 40+ years is that folks that start the divorce procedure with the intent to try to get a free divorce are most likely to  try Do-It-Yourself divorce no matter what. Somehow, possibly financial, there is nothing I‘ve had the ability to uncover to persuade them not to.

DIY in Family Law is typically false economy. You WILL probably screw it up, as well as screwed-up proceedings are much more challenging as well as really expensive to fix as well as finalize. Don’t play this game. The system is developed by lawyers to confuse you as well as force you to employ a divorce lawyer. There are now cost-efficient choices offered– see listed below. Don’t go it alone in Divorce or Family Law.

2. Avoid Traditional Santa Clarita Family Law Attorneys if Your Case is Likely to be Uncontested:

An uncontested divorce is just one in which the litigants will not be contesting any type of concerns, including the divorce itself. The litigants don’t need to be happy as well as they don’t need to care for each other. They are either totally or generally in agreement on all concerns as well as are wise enough to recognize that traditional full-representation divorce lawyers (with substantial retainers as well as billable hrs) would be the only winners if they contended fairly unimportant concerns in their divorce.

Traditional full representation by a local Santa Clarita divorce lawyer is when that lawyer will represent you in all parts of your divorce case. It is highly likely to be a good professional service, but it is very costly.

If you have a disputed matter, a complicated matter, a high-value matter or a matter that involves domestic violence or the threat of domestic violence, full representation by a Santa Clarita divorce lawyer is NOT to be evaded. It is a necessity.

A contested matter indicates that you as well as your spouse/partner are disputing ANY issue in the matter. A complicated matter has legal complexities such as tax concerns, current business concerns, a special needs child of the marriage or any one of numerous additional intricate legal scenarios. A high-value case means that your marital estate is large. There is no specific dollar limit. Certainly, if you have a high 7-figure net marital estate or higher, that is a high-value matter.

If you think that you have a disputed,complex or high-value matter, you do. Employ an expert as well as expensive Santa Clarita divorce lawyer for full conventional representation. Seek a certified Family Law specialist. You will certainly not be sorry you did.

If you do NOT have a disputed, complex, high-value or domestic violence case, you do NOT need conventional full representation by a Santa Clarita divorce lawyer. In fact, under those circumstances, full legal representation by a Santa Clarita divorce lawyer becomes a danger to your financial position. Avoid it.

Naturally, if you call or email a conventional Santa Clarita divorce lawyer, they will not tell you that you do not need their full representation service. In fact, they will try to terrify the crap out of you by telling you that you absolutely need to have their service and that your case will get screwed up without it.

That might happen– even in a non-DIY case. I’ll share with you next how to steer clear of possibly 90+% of the prospective threat of getting your case screwed up if you don’t go DIY and you DON’T employ a conventional Santa Clarita divorce lawyer on a full representation basis.

Your case could also possibly get screwed up if you DID employ a full representation Santa Clarita divorce lawyer. That’s also not likely, however it could possibly happen.

Nevertheless, what will DEFINITELY happen if you employ a conventional full representation Santa Clarita divorce lawyer to manage your uncontested divorce or family law case is that you will get screwed economically. Your case might be dealt with very well, however you will overbuy unnecessary services and you will pay too much for them.

There’s no need for that to happen nowadays. Your parents had few other choices on their family law hiring decisions. Your grandparents had no other choices. You have numerous legitimate choices to make your Santa Clarita uncontested divorce lawyer hiring decision based upon the nature and facts of your case, not upon the BMW payments of Santa Clarita divorce lawyers. Continue reading.

3. Avoid Unqualified Unregulated Online Divorce Mills:

This is without a doubt the most significant risk you deal with in your hiring decision in regards to damage to your future legal and financial security. Non-lawyer online divorce is a substantial market. And it is exceptionally unsafe to your legal and financial future.

Online divorce mills use slick websites, wicked-cool divorce software application, costs lower than MOST lawyers, no legal guidance, no legal knowledge, no professional licensing, no legal education, no code of ethics, no malpractice insurance, no knowledge of Los Angeles County divorce procedures, no local knowledge about Los Angeles County guidelines of court, local Los Angeles County documents, local practices or the policies of individual local judges in the Santa Clarita local area and no professional interest in you or your case. And all within a totally uncontrolled Wild-West market widespread with all sort of incompetence, price scams, and up-selling.

Online divorce mill costs average about $300, however what you get for that $300 charge is remarkably little– just prepared California divorce forms. Any other services supplied are all up-sold on the basis that as soon as they’ve got you hooked, what are you going to do – ignore money already invested? You are at their whim and you are totally unprotected. And they know it!

See the Online Divorce Association of America’s site for a great synopsis of merely some of the more common scams and up-sells to be found in the online divorce market.

If you employ an online divorce mill, you’ll always be contending with low-level, inexperienced, disinterested, high turn-over personnel, call center staff members and folks in India, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Mexico or some other state. Nobody will perform any kind of analysis on your case to safeguard you and any minor children from future legal or monetary damage. Client assistance will be horrible due to the fact that it doesn’t need to be anything else. You will never have the ability to meet with anyone at an online divorce mill as it is highly likely that none of them lie in Santa Clarita or perhaps in California

If you hire an online divorce mill believing you will conserve yourself a few dollars and you and your household end up paying for their errors for several years, that is NOT a low-cost divorce!

4. Avoid Me-Too Lawyer Advertising Platforms:

Me-Too Lawyer Advertising Platforms are online lawyer directory sites like Avvo, FindLaw, LegalZoom, Justia, Google Screened, Google Business Profile (formerly GMB) and now even Yelp. This is the latest mistake to steer clear of in your Santa Clarita divorce lawyer hiring choice.

Nevertheless, the prospective harm here is not huge– nowhere near the damage done routinely by non-lawyer online divorce mills or undoubtedly the damage likely to be done by you to your own case with DIY divorce.

If you hire a Santa Clarita divorce lawyer you found on a mass-lawyer finder platform, you’re going to pay too much to some extent, depending on just how much the lawyer is paying the lawyer finder platform, however not as severely as if you had employed a conventional full representation Santa Clarita family law lawyer straight up.

Certainly, you don’t want to employ a conventional full representation Santa Clarita divorce lawyer you find on a mass-lawyer platform. That would compound your over-payment, however the essential element here is that you don’t want to employ a conventional full representation Santa Clarita divorce lawyer to manage your easy uncontested divorce, no matter where you find that lawyer!!

The threat with hiring a Santa Clarita divorce lawyer that you find ONLY on a mass-lawyer platform is that you’re employing an uninspired Santa Clarita divorce lawyer– a drone who just stands in line with all other Santa Clarita divorce lawyers and HOPES that s/he will get your business however does nothing to distinguish himself or herself from the Santa Clarita lawyer-crowd. That lawyer does nothing to persuade you that s/he is the one-of-a-kind solution to your case. You don’t want that lawyer.

You want to get a Santa Clarita divorce lawyer who is creative, bold, unique, stylish and business-savvy. In fact, why would you hire a Santa Clarita divorce lawyer to take care of your own legal and financial interests when s/he does not even care for his/her own business interests aggressively and decisively? You’re searching for a divorce lawyer who intentionally sets himself or herself apart from the Santa Clarita lawyer-crowd and does NOT blend in by joining Avvo and doing nothing else.

Mass-lawyer finder platforms like Avvo are cost-free to join, which is why every divorce lawyer in Los Angeles County will have signed up. So you ought to not disqualify a Santa Clarita divorce lawyer only because s/he has an Avvo account.

Nevertheless, you ought to not presume that such a Santa Clarita divorce lawyer is really good or business-savvy either. The problem is that while these mass-lawyer platforms are cost-free for the lawyer to join, the lawyer must then start to pay constantly increasing costs on a bid-basis, always contending against other local Los Angeles County divorce lawyers, to be seen on the leading page of the platform’s site. If that lawyer doesn’t pay extra, s/he’ll be on page 3 or 5 of the mass-lawyer site in even a medium-sized town. If that lawyer doesn’t keep bidding up his/her costs, she’ll not get sufficient clients to keep up.

It’s a winner-take-all system with the leading really few lawyers in each town taking almost all cases– based upon just how much marketing costs they can pay– not based upon how excellent they are or on how they have actually configured their offerings to suit your case. The barrier to that me-too lawyer getting your case is the quantity of money s/he is prepared to pay to get it, not the quality and distinctiveness of his/her service offerings.

If that me-too divorce lawyer in Santa Clarita pays more to the mass-lawyer finder company and keeps paying more, s/he’ll get a highlighted position on the platform’s site and will get more cases, however his/her expenses of doing business will constantly rise while his/her costs are fairly fixed by the flat demand for consumer law services such as divorce.

The Santa Clarita divorce lawyer who plays the Avvo pay-to-play scheme will always need a growing number of lower profit cases just to keep up with sales expenses. You don’t want that business-foolishness in somebody you will trust with your legal and financial future.

And yes, that lawyer is going to utilize the exact same brain to care for your case as s/he used to screw his/her own business into the ground.

How to Find the Best Santa Clarita Divorce Lawyer – Divorce & Family Law in Santa Clarita

So above are 4 factors to steer clear of: do it yourself divorce, old-fashioned full-service lawyer representation in easy uncontested cases, unlicensed and uncontrolled online divorce mills and boring me-too drone lawyers who are truly bad at the business of law practice.

So what do you in fact look for in a Santa Clarita divorce lawyer?

Before I advise you, I want to set the stage by offering you two remarkable statistics that I did not believe when I first saw them. These are game-changers in the legal profession and you really need to maximize them in your Santa Clarita divorce lawyer hiring choice:

1. There is a glut of lawyers on the market and it’s serious. According to the ABA National Lawyer Population Survey, in 2017, the whole legal profession lost some 1400 jobs while almost 20,000 brand new lawyers have been added – just in 2017. And the ABA has just certified a huge new law school down in Texas. And this has been trending for years. And all of this surplus of supply while the demand for legal services has been flat or, as in the case of family law, diminishing because of DIY divorce and the overwhelming success of fraudulent and incompetent online divorce mills (both caused by the Internet).
2. From 1988 to 2012, the average solo lawyer practitioner’s yearly income, after adjusting for inflation, dropped from $70,747 to $49,130. Read that last sentence again. This is based on published data from the IRS compiled from solo lawyer practitioner tax returns for the years specified. The legal profession is in serious economic decline. More so in areas of consumer law, like uncontested divorce, where the Internet has reduced the knowledge gap between lawyers and consumers.

What to Look For:

Business-savvy lawyers who want to participate in the divorce industry are under considerable price and business-model pressure right now. Take advantage! You want to hire a Santa Clarita divorce lawyer who has responded to this professional crisis in the following ways.

You want as many of the following factors as you can find in one Santa Clarita divorce attorney:

1. Licensed local Santa Clarita divorce attorney (not an unlicensed out-of-state online divorce mill);
2. Offers unbundled services in uncontested cases– this denotes that you just buy the legal services your case needs. You will normally do your own filing of docs at court and arrange for the service of filed docs on your spouse/partner. The divorce lawyer will evaluate your docs before they are submitted to court, recognize problem concerns in your case and recommend the best choices based upon legal guidance and local knowledge. If you call a lawyer and inquire about unbundled services and you can tell they don’t know or don’t want you to know, just hang up. They don’t yet get it. Move on. Don’t educate them.
3. Uses online divorce software that enables you to log into a client portal and enterall of the personal data in your case.  This not only saves money and time, but it actually empowers you in your own case. You are the source of all informationin your case. Also, there’s no 50-page paper copyone-size-fits-all questionnaire for you to complete in the lawyer’s waiting room.
4. Uses other cloud-based software and apps – listen for buzz phrases like “client portal” and “virtual law practice.” Ask about e-filing and listen closely to determine if the lawyer even knows what it is.
5. Doesn’t have a fancy office in a downtown high-rise or across from the courthouse. You don’t want to pay those rents. This is even more so during C-19. You’re looking for a lawyer in a strip mall or even one who works at home and has one or more shared office arrangements for client meetings. Don’t use a lawyer who has obviously big expenses – YOU pay them!
6. Look for a competitive edge. Look for a lawyer who understands what is going on around him or her in his or her chosen profession. The practice of law is legal education, knowledge and experience attached to a business model. If you call a lawyer and ask about unbundled services or online divorce interviews and they act like law practice is ONLY a noble profession and not a competitive business, hang up. Don’t educate them. They don’t yet get it.
7. Specialization – You don’t want to hire a lawyer who is a jack-of-all-trades on the basis that s/he might get hired for something. There are many different areas of law practice. They are very different from each other. Specialization is the name of the game today. Look at the lawyer’s website. It will tell you whether s/he is trying to get work in numerous areas of practice. It doesn’t matter if the lawyer handles maybe 2 areas of law, particularly if they are both areas of consumer law, such as divorce and bankruptcy. However, if you see that the primary practice area is DUI or personal injury or criminal law and family law appears to be an add-on, move on. Don’t explain.  Just move on. They do not handle enough family law to be any good.  They use family law as an unwanted add-on.  They will not be experienced enough and they will have to charge you a lot because you will be one of very few family law clients. Also, personal injury law paydays are huge and criminal law cases are critical to someone’s personal freedom. Where do you think your family law case will fit into that lawyer’s busy day?
8. Look for a spark – You are looking for a lawyer who has positioned himself or herself in such a way as to convince you that s/he is the unique local divorce lawyer in Santa Clarita that is best suited to resolving your case and your specific problems. This is hard to define, but you will understand if that lawyer makes this connection with you. If there is no such spark on the first exposure, there never will be. Move on.
9. Look for Unique Action – Obviously, this does not involve ONLY standing in line with every other lawyer at Avvo or similar me-too lawyer platforms. Avvo owns all of that attorney’s blog posts and may control his or her entire marketing outreach. Avvo takes money from that lawyer in order to sign up more lawyers in Santa Clarita lawyer-crowd. You’re looking for someone with style who stands out, not melds in. 1-800-DIVORCE is exclusive in Santa Clarita. There is only one 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer in Santa Clarita. Check here or complete the web form below to see if Santa Clarita has a 1-800-DIVORCE.

Divorce and Other Family Law Services Are Available Through 1-800-DIVORCE in Most Medium to Large Cities, Including the Following Cities, As Well As in Santa Clarita:

Simi Valley, Burbank, Thousand Oaks, Palmdale, Pasadena, Los Angeles, Lancaster, Inglewood, El Monte, Oxnard, Downey, Torrance, West Covina, Norwalk, Ventura, Long Beach, Fullerton, Pomona, Anaheim, Garden Grove, Ontario, Orange, Rancho Cucamonga, Santa Ana, Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Irvine, Corona, Fontana, Rialto